


Prophecies

by ladyofbrileith



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-07 00:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofbrileith/pseuds/ladyofbrileith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for an icon-fic challenge: Buffy and Giles share a moment, mid Season-5, reflecting on the prophecies that swirl all around them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prophecies

Buffy stood in the doorway of the back room, watching Giles. He was bent over his desk, muttering to himself as he flipped through one of his musty old books. The room was dim, lit only by a single lamp which rested precariously on the desk corner. Giles slammed the book shut, with uncharacteristic vehemence.

“Damn!” he exclaimed, pulling his glasses off and rubbing the bridge of his nose in apparent frustration.

“What happened, Giles? Did the big, bad book bite you?” Buffy paused. “Ooh, check me out with the alliteration.”

Giles spun around. Buffy saw the frustration in his eyes before he managed to hide it behind an inquiring look.

“Buffy,” Giles said, his voice warm. “I didn’t know you knew what alliteration was.”

“Yeah, well, it was one of those words on the SAT you made me study for. I guess it stuck. Plus, —college girl now, with all the college Englshy-ness that entails.” Buffy kept up the light tone, while searching Giles face. “So, what’d the book do to you?”

“What?” Giles looked confused, then glanced down at the book he still held in his hand. “Oh, right. Nothing. I was just looking for a translation of an obscure reference to a prophecy in Hammadeau’s Demonology and...” he trailed off. “Did you need something?”

“Nope, just thought I’d check in before patroling. Any news from the Council on our resident goddess of skankiness?”

“If you mean Glory...” Giles started.

“There might be another one?” Buffy asked, giving him a fake look of alarm.

Giles rolled his eyes. “There is no news on Glory.”

“So the prophecy you’re trying to translate in Hammond’s Demon book was not about our current situation.”

“Hammadeau’s Demonology and the Slayer,” Giles corrected her. “And no, it has nothing to do with Glory specifically.”

“But, hey with the ‘and the Slayer’ part. Oh God, it doesn’t say I’m gonna die again, does it, ‘cause prophecies about my impending death are not comforting, especially after the whole ‘Death is my gift’ scenario?” Buffy’s alarm was back. An upset Giles was never a good thing. Unless he’d just missed his tea, and then it was an easily fixable thing, but a missed-his-tea-Giles didn’t usually slam books around. “Giles, what is it?”

Giles motioned for her to sit down in the old wooden chair. Buffy sat gingerly, as if her very weight would cause the world to fall apart. “To be honest, Buffy, I don’t know. Ever since we went to the desert, I’ve been looking for some answer to what the First Slayer told you.”

“That Death is my gift,” Buffy repeated dully. Giles nodded. Buffy met his eyes, and he saw the pain in them. This past year had been too hard on her. Riley had left. Her mom had died. The monks had sent her a powerful mystical force in the form of a little sister to love and care for. A god wanted that sister, and Buffy was all that stood in the way of keeping the world from ending—again.

“What have you found?” she asked him quietly.

Giles cleared his throat, removed his glasses, wiped them clean on his handkerchief, settled them back on the bridge of his nose. Buffy waited, her eyes never leaving him.

“There is a prophecy,” he started, hesitantly, “that speaks of a slayer, of sacrifice, of death, of life and of great trials followed by great rewards. But it isn’t clear, anymore than the First Slayer’s insistence that Death is your gift is clear. The reward seems to be life, or maybe death. I thought perhaps it was speaking metaphysically of a reward in the afterlife, but the translations don’t seem to support that.”

“So, what? I don’t get to go to Heaven when I die? I told you that religion was freaky,” Buffy muttered.

“I don’t know, Buffy. It reminded me of the prophecy regarding Angel that Wesley told me of—that Angel’s reward for battling the apocalypse would be death—but as in he gets to be human, grow old and die.” Giles paused, cleared his throat. “The original language of the two prophecies is similar, so the death/life dichotomy is possibly transferable, except that it speaks of both—first death, then life, but there is no understanding of an afterlife in that language, and you are already human, so...”

“It’s a mystery,” Buffy finished. Giles nodded. The two of them sat in silence, staring at the book, lost in their own thoughts.


End file.
